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Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Quantitative Methods to Study Protein Arginine Methyltransferase 1-9 Activity in Cells
Published on: August 7, 2021
A liquid chromatographic method for determination of the modification degree of proteins: PEGylated arginase as an
Pengzhan Yu1, Guohong Qin, Dan Qin
1Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical R&D, Nanjing 210042, China; Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular Targeted Antitumor Drug Research, Nanjing 210042, China.
Abstract:
A liquid chromatographic method was developed to determine the modification degree of PEGylated proteins. This method effectively separated free polyethylene glycol (PEG) from other species in conjugation mixtures on a C4 reversed-phase column using water-acetonitrile gradient elution. Then the concentrations of free PEG were determined according to the integrated area under the curve of its evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) signal, which was normalized by the PEG standard with similar molecular weights. The actual numbers of PEG attached to proteins, not those of lysines modified, were calculated. This method was performed with PEGylated arginase mixtures as an example and showed clear advantages over 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid (TNBS) assays.

